I know there are dozens of similar questions and sorry for asking another one, but I can't find an answer that tells me about my problem.

I created a 10gb partition in windows 8 which is now unallocated space. I restarted into try ubuntu and wanted to install it. When I came to the installation type option it showed me two options: Erase disk and install ubuntu or something else.

I chose something else, but when I did it only showed me my C drive as 500gb free space. The 10gb which I unallocated was not shown there.

I want to know if I continue with partitioning my C drive (which has windows 8 on it), will that erase anything on that drive? What will it do, and why is the installation not showing the 10gb that I've unallocated? Please help!

1 Answer
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First, there's no such thing as a "partition... which is... unallocated space." A partition is, by definition, allocated space. If you deleted or shrank a partition, the result is unallocated space. Although I believe I understand your meaning in this case, miscommunication on this score can lead to a lot of wasted effort as two parties communicate at cross purposes.

Second, although it's OK to shrink partitions in Windows in preparation for installing Linux, you should never create a partition using the Windows tools with the intention of using it in Linux. Doing so may work if you're lucky, but if you're not lucky, Windows will implement its proprietary Logical Disk Manager (LDM) system, and you'll have to jump through hoops to undo this change before you can install Linux. I don't believe this accounts for your problem, but it bears mentioning.

My suspicion is that you're using an older Master Boot Record (MBR) partitioning scheme and have run into a partition table difficulty. There are several things that can cause this type of problem. Many of them can be fixed with my FixParts program. See its documentation, and this page I've written on the topic. If you still have problems, post back with more detail, such as the output of the following commands, typed in a Linux terminal from an emergency disc:

fdisk -l /dev/sda
parted /dev/sda print
gdisk -l /dev/sda

If you use Ubuntu, precede each of those commands by sudo; with other emergency discs or distributions, be sure you log in as root. (Logging in as root is standard with most Linux emergency discs.) If you use Ubuntu, you'll probably have to install gdisk by typing sudo apt-get install gdisk, too. Edit your original question to include the output of these commands.